Shirley Chisholm: 'These have been prescribed roles for a very long time in our country'.

I think it’s very very important that all of us in this country today, regardless of our particular sex, realise that we’ve got to come together, in order to make the republic work for everyone, regardless of race, creed or colour.

St Paul said a long time ago, ‘let the woman learn in silence’ Aeschylus, the great Greek philosopher said ‘woman it is thy place to keep quiet, and stay within doors’.

And just one hundred years ago, Nietzsche, the German philosopher said, ‘when a woman is inclined to learning, there is something wrong with her sexual apparatus’.

Though of course all of these pronouncements were made by gentlemen, so we can understand, but I want to say to you very seriously, that the time has come in America when we must try to overcome the traditional feelings and attitudes towards the sexes in this country.

Because we have been prescribed roles for a very long time in our country. And we now know today, very sincerely and forthrightly that our nation needs the utilisation of its best brain power, whether said brain power can be found in men and /or women.

There is no psychological test as yet that indicates that man has a superior brain to woman, or vice versa.

The fact of the matter is that realistically, the talents that we have, are talents that have been given to us, if you will, by God, and that it is our responsibility to utilise these talents for the ameliorisation of humanity in a creative and constructive manner.

And I find in the United States of America and I’ve done quite a bit of travelling, that there are so many hang ups on sex. Sex, physically, educationally, psychologically and emotionally – that is a preoccupation, instead of utilising the full energies, in terms of seeing what it is that women and men together today in America can do to straighten out our republic, because our republic is in deep trouble.